Mad and magnificent: The Briton going round the world by bike, rollerblade and pedalo | Daily Mail Online Mad and magnificent: The Briton going round the world by bike, rollerblade and pedalo By ROBERT HARDMAN Last updated at 01:25 29 September 2007 Gale force winds and a fast-flowing tide are driving me towards the path of a cross-Channel ferry. It is raining sideways and I can hardly see a thing from my damp, cramped seat, inches above the waterline. The boat is rocking in every direction. My skipper, Jason Lewis, has one very simple instruction: "Pedal! Very fast!" Scroll down for more ... Enlarge From the windows of the harbour authority building, staff stare down with a mixture of pity and incomprehension. Baffled pedestrians look on from a quayside. This is Ostend in Belgium, one of Europe's busiest ports, on a stormy autumn day. And yet here are two British blokes going for a spin in the shipping lanes in a strange pedalo. "They must think we're mad," I yell at Jason. My theory is confirmed moments later as a launch speeds past with the harbourmaster at the helm.

"You're crazy!" he shouts. I couldn't agree more as I pedal faster than a Tour de France yellow jersey on steroids just to avoid being blown into a trawler. There are no gears and the top speed is about three miles per hour. This is hard work. Jason decides to take over the driving seat and calmly manoeuvres this sturdy little craft safley back to base. What on earth will all the onlookers say in a few days' time when they see this same pedalo slowly pottering out into the wild North Sea and setting course for Britain, where a royal welcome awaits? "You get every reaction in the book but I hope some people will wave," says Jason. He is used to strange looks. People have been telling him that he is mad for many years. And doing what he has done, many people would certainly go insane - if they weren't killed first. This tenacious Army officer's son from Dorset is more than unusual. He is, arguably, the most remarkable adventurer in the world today. Because Jason Lewis is about to pedal into the history books as the first person ever to go round the world by human power alone.

He has survived attacks by a huge saltwater crocodile, an alligator, a whale, a couple of sharks and a drunk driver who left him for dead and consigned him to a wheelchair for nine months. He has had malaria - twice - and nearly died from blood poisoning while alone and 1,000 miles from land. He has also had to sacrifice a precious romance or two along the way. But what is more extraordinary than any incident is the sheer scale of Jason's actual mission - or Expedition 360 to give it its proper name. Until now, no human has ever circled the planet without assistance from either wind or machine. And this Herculean task has taken Jason a staggering 13 years. John Major was in No 10, Posh was a shop girl and Wayne Rooney was in primary school when Jason set off. Countless criminals have served "life" sentences in the meantime. Scroll down for more ... Enlarge During his travels, Jason has become the first (and only) person to pedal across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans - using Moksha, the same bizarre contraption that I am operating now.

Through terrifying storms and stultifying doldrums, he has sat in this claustrophobic, floating hamster's wheel crawling along at walking speed, only to be swept back 20 miles sometimes by a disobliging current. The mental stamina is even more impressive than the physical exertion. Ashore, Jason became the first person to cross the U.S.A on rollerblades. He has bicycled across Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe, enduring arrest and angry mobs along the way. He also bumped into a Hollywood film star in the middle of the Sahara. His supporters might include royalty and the Dalai Lama but money has been scarce from the start. En route, he has done every job from ranch manager to undertaker to pay his bills. And now, at long, long last, he is on the very last leg of his odyssey. Just 100 miles of water stand between him and Greenwich where family, friends and the Duke of Gloucester will welcome him back across the finish next Saturday morning. So I am eager to meet this phenomenon as he heads for home. I expect to meet a hairy, wide-eyed cross between Forrest Gump and Rip Van Winkle.

Instead, I meet a clean-cut, cheerful, articulate man who has seen more of the world than almost anyone and who now just wants to have somewhere he can finally unpack his tiny clutch of worldly goods (he owns just one pair of trousers but did "splash out" on two pairs of socks while cycling through Germany the other day). "It would be nice to be able to say 'I'm home'," he laughs as we meet in a cafe in Ostend where Belgian friends have given him accommodation and boatyard facilities to prepare for the last leg. In the next few days, he will transport Moksha down to Calais and follow behind on his bicycle. If the French authorities don't arrest him for being a potential hazard to shipping, as they have threatened, he will pedal across to Dover and round to the Thames Estuary for his triumphal arrival in London. Then, after a hot bath, he will work out what to do next. But it is unlikely to involve travel for a while. "I do get travel-weary," he says. Frankly, after 13 years, I'd be amazed if he did not.

"It's that feeling that you can never just flop down in your own place and put your feet up." He has, though, lost none of his enthusiasm for the original motivation behind this trip - education. Having addressed countless schools and colleges all the way round the globe - many are now regulars on his website - Jason spends a large part of every day corresponding with the world. A homecoming lecture is already booked at the Royal Geographical Society. "This trip was always about teaching people about the rest of the world and the environment. "When I left, I talked about ecological 'footprints' and no one had a clue what I was on about. Now, it's part of the language." Though passionate, he is not preachy. "I'm not going to tell people not to fly round the world just because I have pedalled my way round." Despite being a vegetarian, he has found himself eating everything from grasshoppers to dog meat during his travels. And he has little faith in grand government solutions to the world's problems. "There are lots of so-called do-gooders who just don't do anything.

"I'm afraid I've seen too many United Nations cars outside too many five star hotels and smart restaurants in very poor countries to have much time for those big organisations any more." Instead, he has diverted all his sponsorship funds directly to small projects such as, say, an orphanage in East Timor. Two weeks ago, Jason celebrated his 40th birthday (alone in a tent in Germany). He was just 26 when he left home. After a public school education at Sherborne and a geography degree from London University, he was running a window-cleaning business when a university friend, Steve Smith, suggested an impossibly ambitious adventure. "It was Steve's idea to go around the world using human power alone. I think he wanted to write about it. I liked the sense of adventure." The two men borrowed money from their families to build two all-terrain bikes and a 26-foot pedal-powered wooden boat designed by experts from the Exeter Maritime Museum. With a tiny single bunk in a capsule at the front and a water purifier, it would allow one man to sleep while the other pedalled. The focus, meanwhile, was to raise money and awareness for the (now defunct) Council for Education in World Citizenship.

Its royal patron, the Duke of Gloucester, waved Steve and Jason off from the Greenwich Meridian Line in July 1994. They cycled down to Rye in Sussex, bid farewell to their tearful families and boarded Moksha for her maiden voyage. "We were idiots," Jason recalls. "The boat was full of beer and it was only on the first night that we realised neither of us had ever spent a night at sea before." They reached France without mishap and biked down to Portugal where they were reunited with the boat for the Atlantic crossing. Food shortages and storms strained their friendship and they stopped speaking after a capsize nearly cost Steve his life. "I was probably a bit of a bastard," Jason admits. When they finally reached Miami, they couldn't face the thought of crossing America together so Steve set off on a southerly route by bike while Jason went across the middle on a pair of rollerblades. In Colorado, however, he was run over by a drunken 82-year-old man with a cataract problem who drove off leaving Jason in a critical condition.

It took him nearly a year to recover and resume his skate to California and it was another couple of years before he could raise enough money to get the project back on track. Reunited with Steve, they cycled and kayaked their way down to South America from where they planned to take Moksha across the Pacific. But the El Nino weather pattern of 1997 upset all the winds and currents and scuppered their plans. So, they just travelled thousands of miles all the way back up to San Francisco and set off from there in 1998. After 54 days of pedalling and 2,400 miles they reached Hawaii where Steve finally had had enough. He retired to write his book - Pedalling To Hawaii - and support the project from dry land. Jason continued alone for another 2,400 miles to the island of Tarawa, surviving severe septicemia and repeated brushes with a highly-aggressive oceanic whitetip shark ("the most aggressive of all sharks" according to Jacques Cousteau).

When he finally reached the Solomon Islands, he found a war going on but was joined by his then girlfriend, April Abril, a Colorado teacher he had met during his convalescence. There was just one problem. "April had never been in a boat before," says Jason. "She was seasick the whole way but she was incredibly brave and never missed her shift on the pedals." The two of them pedalled 1,100 miles across the Coral Sea but April was so ill and the approach over the Barrier Reef was so treacherous that Moksha had to be towed for the last 20 miles. Because rules are rules, Jason then had to go back out to exactly the same point using a GPS satellite receiver and retrace the final section of the voyage under human power. He decided to do it by kayak but it was then that he had the most terrifying experience of the entire adventure. "I was alone and coming into a remote beach when this huge saltwater crocodile started chasing me.

"I think he thought the kayak was another croc on his territory." Jason paddled so hard that the kayak shot on to the sand, from where he ran behind a dune, while the 15-foot croc started to eat his kayak. Seeing his transport being consumed, Jason tried to beat the reptile away with his oar - only to see that disappear down the creature's throat, too. He really was up the proverbial creek without a paddle. "Finally, the croc gave up and swam off. So I decided to burn the rest of the kayak. I needed to send some sort of distress signal. "Also, I'm not religious, but the Pacific had been a real pain and it was time to make an offering to the gods." It worked and a coastguard seaplane picked him up. His original plan had been to get round the world by 1997. It was now 2000 and Jason was still only half way. Word came from Britain that his father, a career officer in the Royal Tank Regiment, was ill with cancer and Jason flew home to be with his parents and two sisters. Once his father had undergone successful treatment, though, Jason was soon back in Australia.

In 2001, he cycled across the outback with a team of students before pedalling on to Indonesia and South East Asia. He caught malaria in Laos, narrowly avoided arrest in Tibet, cycled all the way up to the Himalayas and back down to Mumbai. With another supporter, he pedalled across the Indian Ocean, risking daily attack from the pirates in the region. On the one occasion that a boat full of gunmen did approach, he used the novel tactic of standing on top of the boat stark naked and waving. The gunmen turned and fled. Once in Africa, he was pelted with rocks in Ethiopia and arrested in Egypt as a potential spy. He also had a surreal moment cycling through the Sahara earlier this year when he bumped into the film star, Ewan McGregor, motorcycling in the other direction with a film crew. The production gave him £1,000 of sponsorship on the spot. Having rowed across the Bosphorus from Asia into Europe in August, Jason then made fast work of the bike ride up to Belgium. He knows it will be an emotional reunion with his family and that he has some catching up to do.

He owns nothing, has no pension and has never heard of, say, an ISA. But he wants to keep on educating the world and has plans to develop a DVD for schools. He has paid off most of his debts and has invited all the 2,000 people who have helped the project in some way to his homecoming on October 6. He still needs a sponsor for the final leg, though, not least to ensure that Moksha can be safely preserved as an exhibit somewhere for posterity. So where next? "I can honestly say that, looking back on all the exotic places I've seen, nowhere really grabs me. "I miss the green, rolling hills of Britain." After pedalling round the largest boating pond in existence, this really is a case of: "Come in, Number One. Your time is up." Greenwich People | The Greenwich Phantom The Greenwich Phantom An Intimate Guide to Life in Greenwich Friday 20th January 2017 Friday, January 25th, 2008 1766-1828 I’ve been watching the diggery going on in the grounds of Devonport House with interest.

When I first saw the workmen in there I was a bit worried that they’d discovered a nice patch of real-estate to build flats on in the middle of town (paaayyyydiiirt!) but as the weeks wore on it was clear they were just building paths. It’s all been lain out there now, with baby hedges and little benches, with paths around each monument. Personally, I always rather liked a little piece of un-worked land just there. Everything else (and now this) is so manicured that a little shaggy grass was a welcome sight – and went well with the austere building behind it. These paths feel like they’re trying a bit too hard. I almost quite liked that no one was officially let in, though of course I can’t have been the only one who sneaked in occasionally to view the monuments. Does this mean that it will now be officially opened so that anyone can walk around – or is it going to be a private garden? Who can tell. For the moment those heavy iron gates are firmly locked, but that path goes right down to them. Maybe it’s for show.

In the meanwhile, at least it’s less than impressive for their new scheme if they continue to display huge plastic banners advertising cheap conference facilities… But once more I’m digressing. I’ve been looking into a few of the remaining memorials in the grounds and, if you recall, the one that’s been bugging me most has been the broken column… I used to have a book about Victorian Funerary Symbolism (a remainder-shop-lovely, which I stupidly got rid of several culls ago. Whenever I have a book-cull, I always regret it…) which was all about the symbolism of graveyards. Ivy is the obvious one – for eternal life. Time is another biggie – scythes, hourglasses and skulls (like those splendid ones at St Nicholas in Deptford) are pretty obvious, as are sleeping babies and cherubs. I knew a broken column was hugely significant but, couldn’t remember quite what it was… Thank God for the internet. If you are of a similarly warped disposition as me, you will love this dictionary of Victorian Funerary Art – never be without it when you’re walking around a graveyard again.

It’s an American website, but I’m pretty sure that the basics are the same – they seem to make sense. “Column, broken: an early grief, end of life, sorrow. Life cut short too soon. May be girded with flowers. This image represents the decay. It usually represents the loss of the family head.” Trouble is, the longer I look at it, the less sure I am that it’s just that. There’s deffo a broken column there – but is that a flame too? “Vessel with flame: the eternal flame or the eternal spirit of man.” …or is the whole thing covered in a cloth? “Drapery: Drapery over anything – sorrow, mourning “ And what’s with the wreath? “Laurel wreath: is usually associated with someone who has attained distinction in the arts, literature, athletics or the military.” So who was this guy? Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Boulden-Thompson, actually.

“Knight and baronet, and grand cross of the most honourable military order of the bath; vice-admiral of the red; treasurer of Greenwich Hospital ; a director of the chest; and a visitor of the West India Naval School.” The Annual Biography and Obituary of the Year 1828 Blimey – that sounds crusty. But a closer look at he seems rather more Master and Commander than at first appears. This is the chap described by Nelson as “an active young man,”as he fought at Santa Cruz and was injured, though not as badly as Nelson himself of course, who lost an arm. Thompson got much more badly-injured captured by the French in a long sea battle not long after, trying to save his ship, The Leander at the Nile. The dastardly French treated them appallingly, plundering everything in sight – including the instruments of a surgeon who was in the middle of an operation. When Thompson tried to remind the French Captain of the way French prisoners were treated by the English, he merely shrugged gallic-ly. “I am sorry for it, but the French are expert at plunder…” When Thompson was finally freed he was court-martialled for losing The Leander.

I’m not sure how he managed to not only get off the charge, but get himself a knighthood in the process, but he certainly went on to have all kinds of honours bestowed on him. It was all going very well indeed. He continued to fight under Nelson, until it all went horribly wrong at the Battle of Copenhagen, where he lost a leg. “I am now totally disabled and my life is run through, only at the age of 35,” he wrote in frustration. Well. Not quite. He may not have made it to Trafalgar, but back home his derring-do had not gone unnoticed. He was made Treasurer of the Royal Naval Hospital and became an MP. He became Director of the Chest after the death of Lord Hood. It remains to be seen whether we’ll be officially allowed in to see Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Boulden-Thompson’s tomb at closer-hand, or whether we’ll have to continue resorting to the time-honoured tradition of sneaking round the back. In the meanwhile, the broken column is one of the more visible of the Devonport memorials.

More stories of obscure monuments another day… Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 1708 – 1760 What I love about Greenwich is that whatever cliche you care to mention, we have an example of it somewhere. Lavinia Fenton is 18th Century ‘actresses’ personified (child prostitute to duchess with a spot of acting in between) and it’s very pleasing to know that she once walked at least one or two of the streets we know today (no – not that kind of walk – by that time she was most definitely in “respectable” mode. There is, of course, as with all stories of this nature, a questionable lineage. She was brought up by her mother’s husband, but it’s unlikely he was her real father – that honour probably going to a sailor (see what I mean about cliche?) called Beswick. These were saucy days – where London was a dangerous and exhilarating world full of coffee houses, silks, satins, grand buildings – and footpads, murderers, cozeners, whores, drinking and gambling dens.

She became a child prostitute (there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of filles-de-joie in those days – it’s worth taking a peek at a copy of the slightly later quarter-million seller Harris’s Lists of Covent Garden Ladies which was literally a catalogue of hookers – what they looked like, where they lived and what they would do, including ‘specialities’ of eye-popping inventiveness – any notions of genteel history fly right out of the window…) but really made her (stage) name as an actress. As Lavinia Fenton she played Monimia in Thomas Otway’s The Orphan in 1726 at the Haymarket Theatre, and then moved onto Lincoln’s Inn Fields where she joined a theatre company and became quite a starlet – mainly with the gentlemen. It wasn’t that she was particularly beautiful, but she was vivacious (why aren’t people described as ‘vivacious’ any more?) had a good figure and could sing well Her big moment came with the still-performed (though more often as the inspiration for Brecht/Weil’s Threepenny Opera) Beggars Opera by John Gay.

No one was interested in any of the other poor sods in the show – all the notices raved about her portrayal of Polly Peachum and she became almost synonymous with the role. Audiences went mad, buying up all the souvenirs they could – mezzo-tint drawings, ‘biographies’ – and the lyrics of her songs printed on ladies fans (I wonder if they have one in the Fan Museum..?) There was one fan in particular, of the supporter-variety, Charles Paulet, who became really obsessed. The fact that he was the 3rd Duke of Bolton probably made the attention a bit more palatable but he was hardly a catch looks-wise. Much older than her, in Hogarth’s painting of a performance of the show, he is the creepy bloke watching her intently from the box in full stalker-fashion. The flesh crawls even more when you know that this particular performance was taking place in Newgate Prison. It was the talk (though hardly scandal – everyone was at it) of the town but she knew which side her crumpets were buttered and, after several revivals of the show, she moved in with him. He married her as soon as his wife died.

They had three illegitimate children. So what’s the connection with Greenwich? Well, she survived her husband and came to live at Westcombe House. This is not, of course, John Julius Angerstein’s Woodlands; it was an earlier building. I think there’s a painting of it in The Spread Eagle restuarant. She spent the rest of her life living grandly as a Duchess, and when she died was buried in St Alfege’s Church. I’m not sure where her grave is; I assume it’s in the crypt with Thomas Tallis and General Wolfe, but if anyone knows for sure, I’d like to know. We don’t have any real reminders of her in Greenwich, which is a shame – a nice statue of her as Polly Peachum would be a welcome feminine addition to a largely masculine bunch of sculptures here – but there is, inexplicaby, a Rua Lavinia Fenton in Sao Paulo and a Lavinia Fenton suite in a hotel in Basingstoke. Thursday, January 17th, 2008 The Old Ticket Office, Woodlands Park Road, SE10 Once upon a time there was a little railway station.

It was a fine railway station, with wide sidings and a dear little ticket office who was his best friend. But one day a wicked old wizard came along and cast an evil spell, his greedy eye on the little station’s land. The little station fought and fought but the wicked old wizard’s magic was too strong. The brave little station survived but at what cost? He had lost his lovely sidings and the wizard forced him to live with an ugly hovel instead of his beloved ticket office. Only the wave of a fairy godmother’s magic wand and could save the little station’s friend… Maze Hill Pottery is a wonderful example of the kind of thing we can’t afford to lose in Greenwich – a sweet little Victorian building turned into something that isn’t an estate agent’s office or a KFC rip-off. It’s run by Lisa Hammond, an internationally-acclaimed artist whose stuff is not just beautiful, it’s useful too. Each item is unique and although she does do some interesting ‘art’ pieces, most of her stuff is actually useable.

Bowls and pots, cafetieres and casseroles, each is subtley different and has a practical purpose, rather than just an ornamental dust-trap function… As I was walking past one day in December, I saw a postcard advertising an open studio day – just the sort of thing I can’t resist. Even better, it was going to coincide with a rare kiln-opening. Apparently the thing takes several nail-biting days to cool properly – if she opens the door too quickly, the contents crack. She doesn’t actually know how her latest pots will turn out for some time after she’s fired it all up. And since she only fires up about once a month, a bad batch can represent a real problem. What seemed like the entire population of Greenwich turned up for the opening – let’s face it, it’s not the sort of thing we often get to see round here – and the tiny studio was utterly packed. As the rack was slowly winched out, the tension on Lisa Hammond’s face was obvious, turning to relief as she realised that it was, after all, a good batch. Pots and plates, vases and jars, all jumbled up next to each other, filling the kiln to the last inch.

What I found delightful was the surprise Lisa Hammond still has every time she opens a kiln. She can’t be sure exactly how anything will look – I didn’t realise just how inexact a science slips and glazes are. And that’s what makes ceramics so exciting. As she examined each piece, it was clear that even things from the same batch will be different – so every item is unique. A good thing in this age of mass-production. Lisa Hammond exhibits all over the world, and her wares can be purchased from exclusive stores in Tokyo (though of course you could just nip into the workshop if she’s in there.) It’s a terrific place to get presents (it solved the problem of what to get for the Phantom-Webmaster-who-has-everything) but they don’t have to be just pottery. Lisa Hammond finds time to run classes and workshops too which would also make a good ‘virtual’ gift. I’ve never been to a class, but I’m tempted. They look great fun. There’s loads about them and all manner of other interesting things about the place itself on the excellent website.

I won’t reinvent the (potter’s) wheel here by repeating what can be found at Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 Iris Bryce, Greenwich Community College Press, 1995 I hadn’t expected much from this book. I’d passed it over several times in the Pepys Centre Tourist Information shop, having read various local ‘memoirs’ in the past and been underwhelmed by the writing standard and unexciting content. I was put off by the cover (aw, c’mon – show me the person who doesn’t judge books by covers just a little…) with its dated font and annoying landscape format. Once again I’ve been forced to eat humble pie. I bought this book on Friday and, despite a full weekend where I was staying with friends and supposed to be doing stuff with them, I just couldn’t tear myself away from it. Iris Bryce is not just a natural storyteller, she has a story to tell.

Born and brought up in the centre of Greenwich in the 1920s and 30s, she came from a world where if you left your very street you were in foreign parts, dangerous and murky to a child who knew the hostility of poverty and the dangers of straying into the territory of a rival gang of kids. Of course, we’re hardly talking Yardies here. This is good old-fashioned intimidation, not gun culture. But childhood cruelty comes in many forms and the taunts of kids from a street only slightly more well-off than your own still cuts to the quick if you’re the only one whose mother, even in a poor street, has to go to work to make ends meet. And to wander into the really poor areas was to risk the horrors of the ‘witch’ who sat on the step smoking a clay pipe or the docks, warehouses and scrap yards, with their seedy, shady ‘other’ worlds. Where Iris Bryce’s memoirs differ from so many stories of poor, working class lives in the 20th Century is the knowledge that, from a very early age, she wanted out of the circle of poverty that most considered their lot.

She was a bright kid, something recognised by her teachers, but not her own family. Time after time she was given glimmers of hope – offers of scholarships and better education, time after time she suffered the despair of her father ripping up the letters that would better her life and throwing them into the fire. This is no misery memoir though (BTW – has anyone noticed that places like Waterstones now have a special section for this dismal genre? I vaguely remember the title “Tragic Lives” sits above the section. I ask you – who on earth would search these books out as a matter of course?) Bryce’s frustration is palpable but she never gives up for more than a few seconds, and it is that optimism that drives the book, and which kept me reading. The detail about Greenwich is fine-tuned – enough streets, pubs and places namechecked to give a sense of real geography, but it is balanced with a strong storyline which although not always linear (hard to do linear when you’re talking about someone’s life, I guess) has a humanity about it.

Even people like her father, an angry, violent man, are never painted totally black – there are moments of tenderness where it’s possible to see the dilemma and perhaps even guilt Bryce felt at wanting to leave her ‘lot’ behind. This is not a perfect book. But it is mainly sins of omission, rather than badly-written. Bryce repeats herself from time to time, but it’s not something that really bothers me. Hell, I do it myself. What does get me, though, is that at no point is there any kind of biography of the author, and we are not given any start date for the story – forcing the reader to try to work out what period we’re talking about. This vagueness makes the early part of the book shaky, as the reader is constantly trying to work out dates of gas-lamps, street name changes and electricity-arrival just to get a handle on when other things are going on. My biggest problem with the book is its sudden end. Even a book that will have a sequel needs some kind of conclusion. Its whole conceit has been driven by Bryce’s desire to leave her world, and at the end, she sort of does – she contrives to get herself conscripted into the ATS.

But that’s it. For a story so well-paced up to this point, it’s extremely frustrating to turn to a blank page. No word on what happened next, whether she actually managed to break out of her cycle of poverty or even whether she ever returned to Greenwich. Even a “coming soon” teaser-note at the bottom would have sufficed. I found it extremely frustrating, lying in bed Sunday night, after a weekend of snatched paragraphs and sneaky peeks, to not actually find out ‘the end.’ Of course the first thing I did yesterday was get onto the internet to see what I could find out about Iris Bryce and, after some searching, I have found out some of her story – she apparently married a well-known British jazz musician and went to live on a barge, writing several books about her life on the canals. There is even a follow-up to Remember Greenwich. I concede that she perhaps didn’t know there would be a sequel when the first book was published – but a short biography at the end – even a few sentences – would have rounded-off the story without ruining the appetite. I thoroughly recommend this book, whatever minor issues I may have with it.

It would warrant a reprint – perhaps combined with the sequel, in a more attractive format, but in the meanwhile, I intend to quote liberally from this remarkable woman’s story. It is as much a part of Greenwich’s history as that of Henry VIII, Samuel Pepys and John Flamsteed. Jason Lewis – Expedition 360 Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 You know, just when I go off on one of my favourite hobby-horses – that in our homogenised, bland-ed- up, dumbed-down society there is no room for characters any more – Jason Lewis turns up and restores my faith in eccentricity. Not, of course, that this is the old-fashioned, nutty form of eccentricity – he doesn’t keep 58 cats in a council flat or invent flippers for injured penguins. This is a modern, highly-organised, website-savvy eccentricity – but none the less exciting for that. I bet not many people remember the departure on the 12th July 1994. If I’m honest I can’t remember what I was doing myself, let-alone what probably elicited one of those “And finally…” type stories on the news.

Two guys, Steve Smith and Jason Lewis, thought it would be fun to try to circumnavigate the earth using only human power. You know the sort of thing – biking, hiking, roller-skating, swimming, kayaking and, my favourite, pedalo-pedalling. I mean – one of those ridiculous little boats for kiddies you get in Greenwich Park – in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? That’s eccentric in my book. Still at least there were two of them. They set out from Greenwich (where else should you set out from if you’re circumnavigating the globe?) and a BBC website photo shows them posing at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower on the first leg of their journey. But Steve Smith only made it to Hawaii – he returned to write the obligatory book – while Lewis soldiered on alone. I doubt he expected the jaunt to last 13 years. His main problem was cash. Explorers of the olden days relied on aristocratic family wealth or being sponsored by sovereigns who demanded they nab land for them in return. These days sponsors want a different kind of riches – advertising – and there ain’t much room for a poster on the side of a pedalo.

Although there’s an impressive lost of sponsors listed on his website, I suspect that they weren’t all queueing up to give him money to start with – especially when he was knocked off his rollerblades in Colorado by an 82 year-old drink driver and broke both legs. It got even less glamorous. He contracted malaria. Was attacked by crocs. Had to treat himself when he got septicaemia in the Pacific on his pedalo, though he did get to stop and eat Christmas dinner with some cable-layers in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Lewis often had to stop his trip for less fun reasons -to earn enough money to continue – mainly crap jobs, but occasionally more dinner-party-discussion-worthy stuff like working as an undertaker and a cowboy among other things along the way (and now – oh, boy is there a publishing deal to be had now…) So – back to why this story’s on this blog. Jason Lewis finishes his mammoth tour on Saturday, welcomed back to Greenwich by clamouring crowds and the Duke of Gloucester.

He’s probably going to miss out on a couple of Guinness World Records on technicalities but as a thoroughly modern eccentric, he can count on a healthy after-dinner speaking career to keep him afloat now he’s back on dry land… I have tried in vain to find out the exact time of his arrival on Saturday morning. For the same (most annoying) reasons I won’t be able to make it to the Greenwich Market Consultation I won’t be waving my hat in the air to greet him, but if any of you folk go, do let me know what it was like… Thursday, September 13th, 2007 1437(ish) – 1492 Family weddings – don’t you love ‘em. A few glasses of cheap bubbly, someone from the bride’s side insults the groom’s mother and all hell breaks loose. Bun-fights, punch-ups and the next thing you know someone’s started the next round of the Wars of the Roses… So there was young Margaret of Anjou, who, if you remember, had married Crazy Henry VI and had just done up her new pad at Greenwich in girly colours and pretty patterns.

Life had got a bit scary after Jack Cade’s rebellion so she’d decamped Ooop North and Round One of the Wars of the Roses had got underway. Edward IV came to the throne in 1461 and was the complete opposite of Henry VI. He was the kind of squared-jawed burly-framed Hollywood Hunk that made women swoon – he was 6 foot 4 at a time when most people were about a foot shorter and his interests included hunting in Greenwich Park, gold-brocade outfits and knightly pursuits. I can just see those Disney-esque teeth gleam… He married local girl Elizabeth Woodville (from Lee) probably for love, or at least lust, given her long black hair, her famed beauty and especially her lovely heavy-lidded eyes (“the eyes of a dragon”, one chronicler tells us. The mind boggles.) Apparently her USP was her skill at fluttering her eyelashes. It was all hush-hush – not least because Lizzy’s first husband had been killed fighting for the Lancastrians – when Edward was the leader of the York contingent.

When they found out, his advisers who’d had their eye on a nice political union with a French princess, were pretty fed up. Some even whispered that she’d bewitched him, a murmur that got rather louder when she bowled up to Westminster Abbey with some of her distant Luxembourgian relatives carrying shields with pagan goddesses painted on them and the whole thing had to be settled by fisticuffs. Edward poo-pooed the lot of them and where the rest of us are lucky to get a toaster, he gave Lizzy Greenwich as a wedding present, including the tower and park. Nice work if you can get it. They seem to have had a happyish life (considering that England was in turmoil and everyone hated everyone else) although he appears to have had a lot of mistresses, most of who also seem to have been called Elizabeth. I’m just glad Freud wasn’t going to be around for 700-odd years.) Edward had lots of children by both his wife and others, at least two of whom you’ll have come across – but we’ll get to that. Sadly Elizabeth’s family were the original Sarf London chavs – they pushed themselves forward at every opportunity and won themselves no great favours at court.

They made sure they married themselves into as many of the best families as possible (presumably wearing Burberry doublet-and-hose) and availed themselves of all the lucrative opportunities to shine, which many of the courtly toffs thought was dreadfully vulgar. One splendid example of Early Bling was when one of Lizzy’s rather obscure brothers-in-law died, they interred him at St Albans with a gigantic, very shiny and much larger brass plaque than even that of the Bishop. It all became very embarrassing, but all Edward really wanted was an easy life and he tended to turn a blind eye to it all. It was at Greenwich that the ultimate Little Britain family wedding took place. Elizabeth’s son by her first marriage was given the hand of Anne, an heiress, who had been promised to heavy-hitting York-supporter the Earl of Warwick who had been instrumental in bringing Edward to the throne and was naturally a bit pissed off at Edward’s short memory. I am so glad I wasn’t at that wedding – I imagine a surreal cross between an Alan Ayckbourn parlour drama, The Royle Family and a Quentin Tarantino shootemup.

The slighted Earl of Warwick switched sides, withdrew to France and cooked up Round Two of the Wars of the Roses with New Best Friend Margaret of Anjou. Meanwhile, back at Greenwich, it all got a bit nasty when Edward died. Elizabeth became, briefly, “Queen Mother,” to her two little princes who were the heirs to the throne, but – and I’m sure you can see where this is going – enter, stage left, Hiss! Boo! panto villain, Uncle Richard. I have no idea whether Richard III was actually as evil as he is painted – or, indeed, any more evil than anyone else at the time – there is a lot of revisionist history going on just now – but one thing seems sure. Richard found a priest who said that he had presided over Edward and Elizabeth’s marriage and that since Edward was already promised to marry someone else, he had committed bigamy. Richard declared Dead Ed’s marriage null and void, Lizzy was banished from court and the two princes disappeared.

In later life, after being brought back into favour and seeing her daughter married to the future Henry VI, Elizabeth was allowed back to court for a bit, before being packed off to a nunnery in Bermondsey for possibly being involved in a rebellion (all that’s left now of Bermondsey Abbey is a rather sad-looking plaque on the wall of some council flats. You can see it if you travel into town on the 188 bus. ) She was nearly married to the young King of Scotland but he most inconveniently died, so the now-ageing ex-queen stayed in the convent, where she died too. She was given a no-frills funeral by her son-in-law King Henry VII which, as you can imagine, really offended her designer label-loving relatives. But was she bovvered? I doubt it. Her daughter had just given birth to Henry VIII. Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 1675/6? – 1734 James Thornhill, in accepting Wren’s commission to decorate The Painted Hall, made one fundamental mistake. He agreed to be paid after the mural was finished.

In all fairness, he probably didn’t imagine that it was going to take 19 years and had his eye on a little more than money at the time (as well as seeing the job as a superb advert for his skills, he fancied a knighthood and a life in politics.) Thornhill wasn’t a Greenwich guy by birth – he came from gentle stock – albeit impoverished. He got himself apprenticed to Thomas Highmore, who did fancy paintings in toff’s houses across the land. He proved an apt pupil, and got a fair amount of work on graduating, but needed a special job that would act as a calling card for even more splendid commissions. The Painted Hall seemed the perfect opportunity to show off. He just hadn’t counted on how long it would take. The allegories and allusions that litter the ceiling and walls of the Painted Hall deserve a separate entry on another day, but suffice to say that it is absolutely chock-a-block with stuff going on – stuff which meant much more to an 18th Century viewer than it does to us today. He had taken this job as a way to display how good he was at painting portraits – and he certainly got a lot of practice.

The Royal Family kept changing and he had to repaint sections, and since he was being paid at the end, he received no recompense for continually repainting the various Kings, queens and sundry royal hangers-ons’ likenesses. The job got out of hand in virtually every respect. The hall, originally intended as a mess room for the elderly sea dogs was covered in scaffolding and paint pots, so the pensioners had to eat downstairs in the undercroft. (They never returned, because when Thornhill finished it was deemed too posh for the likes of them, and just became a tourist attraction, where the old boys earned a few coppers by showing visitors around.) Thornhill had his fun, with a few allegorical gags but things were really dragging on. It didn’t help that various contemporaries who could have been more charitable were, frankly, sniffy about him. Sir John Vanbrugh , who was, to be honest, in a bit of a Glass house himself, thought it would be “a pleasant joke” when Thornhill, a mere “painter” applied to become Royal Architect at Greenwich.

He clearly thought a playwright would be better qualified – and, of course, he was right… In 1718, as a bit of a sop, presumably, King George I appointed him court painter, promoting him to Sergeant Painter two years later, when he also knighted him. It was the least he could do, considering how he was going to shaft the guy when he actually finished. There was a great deal of grumpiness over the bill when Thornhill’s work finally came to an end. I’m not sure how much of an insult it was to treat him as a posh painter and decorator in the end, instead of paying him as an allegorical historical artist, but it must have stung like crazy to have his life’s work divvied up by the yard – three quid for the ceiling and a mere pound for the walls. Luckily, by this point he wasn’t desperate for the cash, having gone into politics in the meanwhile, and he was still able to build a rather sweet palladian country pile at Stalbridge in Dorset. He set up his own art academy where one of his saucier students, William Hogarth met and married Thornhill’s daughter.

Thornhill is part of Hogarth’s parliamentary group ‘The Goals Committee of the House of Commons.’ Nearer the end of his life he didn’t have any commissions (presumably being out of the loop for 19 years didn’t help much)so he set himself to copying the Rapheal Cartoons at Hampton Court. He managed a lot, but slowness still bugged him and he never completed them. Vanbrugh Castle Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 Sir John Vanbrugh is a classic example of the Renaissance Man (even if he was a bit late to be truly from those times.) There aren’t too many people who can have claimed to have written some of the rudest, funniest and most influential plays of their day, become Surveyor to Greenwich Hospital with vitually no experience and been the architect of several of the largest and most opulent palaces in Britain. Hardly surprising, then, that when he came to building his own dwelling, he wasn’t going to settle for any old boring house. He didn’t start out very well. The son of a linen merchant in Chester, he decided that the best way to see the world was to join the army.

Trouble was, he had a bit of an unusual surname and he managed to get arrested in France because they thought he was Dutch. Since he didn’t have any papers on him, they decided to throw him in jail. Rather optimistically, they had assumed that he was really important and put him up for ransom in exchange for some high-end French prisoners. Sadly for Vanbrugh, no one gave a stuff and he ended up there for five years before the French gave up. By this point he was nearly 30, so he had a bit of catching up to do. He claims to have written The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger in six weeks. Whether he did or not, it was an instant hit, and he was suddenly the toast of seamy, seedy, fashionable London. A natural bon viveur, he was extremely popular with his public (The Provok’d Wife came hot on the heels of his first hit) but not so popular with the other bon viveurs of the day, upon whose square-capped satin shoes Vanbrugh was joyfully treading.

He built himself a very curious house in Whitehall, which Jonathan Swift reckoned looked like a Goose Pie (whatever one of those looks like,) everyone laughed heartily and it was known as Goose Pie House ever after. I have no idea how John Vanbrugh persuaded Lord Carlisle to ditch the highly experienced architect he had asked to build what was to be Castle Howard and hire the experience-free Vanbrugh instead, but that man must have had some gift of the gab. This guy had never built anything bigger than his extremely odd house and had no skill at all as a draughtsman. I mean – the man couldn’t even draw. He built a little wooden model to show Carlisle what he had in mind. Presumably he got some tips from his mate, Sir Christopher Wren. Mr Swift was even more scathing. But Castle Howard, with all its turrets and ramparts and crenellations went up and got Vanbrugh another commission. Blenheim Palace was next.

But he started doing all sorts of things not in the original model (actually, he started adapting the old castle in its grounds as, ahem, a bijou residence for himselfand ended up with a very angry duchess, so he wrote some notes about the aesthetics of architecture to placate her and inadvertently created a seminal treatise that is still valued today. But the duchess wasn’t impressed, and Woodstock Castle was demolished. Vanbrugh’s fascination with the theatrical pervaded everything he did. Virtually everything he built looked like a stage set. He was renting a place in Greenwich that he hated (John Evelyn visited and even he had to admit it was “wretched.”) But he did like the view – and let’s face it, the view from the little mini roundabout outside Vanbrugh Castle is still one of the great sights of Greenwich (if a little changed from Vanbrugh’s day.) Because his job was now there (he was surveyor to Greenwich Hospital though frankly didn’t do an awful lot) he decided to set up his new roots and Maze Hill, handily next to the park, was as good as any.

Vanbrugh Castle was his usual concoction of towers and crenellations, gatehouses, ramparts, arch-y windows etc, in brick rather than stone,and he made sure that he kept his view by making the lead roof accessible – possibly Greenwich’s first roof garden. It all looked very medieval and has been claimed to be influential in the beginning of the Gothic revival in the 19th Century. I am glad that Vanbrugh Castle itself remains to this day (if vastly altered on the interior, presumably) but that makes me even sadder about what is not left. Vanbrugh built a row of about 5 follies in his back garden, placed prettily down the hill to a ‘fortified’ gatehouse at the road. It must have looked fantastic. It was meant to impress visitors who would travel past each of them as they wound up their own private road just to the east of Maze Hill.

Romantic names like “The Nunnery” and “Mince Pie House” (clearly Vanbrugh had a bit of a thing for pies, and let’s face it, who doesn’t?) and “The White Towers” conjure images that can only be imagined today as I am pretty convinced none of them exist any more (please tell me I’m wrong and someone has one of these in their back garden…) The Castle, at least, survives, albeit divided into apartments. I cannot comment on the interior as I have never seen it. Maybe you can fill me in? The yellow stock bricks have darkened with age, but that imposing frontage is still with us. Thank heavens.

Question: Jason Lewis and Steve Smith were the first persons to cross the Atlantic from east to west using what unusual form of transport
Answer: Pedalo